


Dispatched

by gaksital



Category: Girl's Day (Band), VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaksital/pseuds/gaksital
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An account of one of Seoul's hardest working detective squad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 11 -54: Suspicious Vehicle

**11-54 - Sojin**

 

Being called out of the precinct for something as mundane as a suspicious vehicle was a welcome break for Sojin. After years of being a uniform, she thought that she would be glad to be rid of all the errand running once she made detective. However, now that she was the lead detective for a squad full of young kids, reverting back to her days in uniform was something she tried to do on a regular basis, usually for simple cases like this one.

Sojin knocked on the door of the apartment that dispatch had said the call had come from. The apartment building itself wasn’t much to look at--it was around twenty years old and the bottom floor was taken up by a convenience store. When the door to the third floor apartment opened, a young woman that Sojin guessed must be a stay at home mom, greeted her. She looked tired, and Sojin had obviously interrupted her cooking something, as she was wearing a well-used looking apron. “Are you the one who called about the suspicious car?” Sojin asked once she had introduced herself.

“Yes,” the woman responded quietly, looking over Sojin’s business card. “I didn’t think they’d send a head detective out. I might just be paranoid and I don’t want to be a bother...”

“It’s not a problem, ma’am.” Sojin reassured. “Even if it turns out to be nothing, we would rather be safe.” The woman nodded slowly, and though Sojin wanted to reassure her a little more, but she needed to get to work. “Can you show me where the vehicle is at?”

“Yes, of course,” the woman responded quickly. “Let me just grab my son; he’s just learned to walk on his own and won’t stop getting into things if he’s left alone.”

“No problem,” Sojin murmured with a little smile, watching the woman shuffle hurriedly into another room. Though she had no kids of her own, Sojin had enough experience with her younger brother to know what trouble toddlers could be.

Once the little boy was secured in his mother’s arms and had tried at least twice to pull Sojin’s hair when his mother introduced him, the group headed down the stairs, Sojin bringing up the rear. They exited the building from the back, which spat them out into a side alley where only dumpsters and rats should stay overnight.

The woman pointed to a white delivery van a little deeper into the alley. “It’s that van,” she said, and Sojin could hear the worry in her voice. “It wasn’t there a couple of days ago, and it hasn’t moved since it showed up.”

Walking towards it, Sojin asked in a light tone, “Have you seen it before?”

The woman, following behind, said, “No; I’ve lived in this building since I married my husband seven years ago, and I’ve never seen a car back here, let alone this one.”

Sojin nodded. It made sense that this woman would call the police. She was young, married, and had a very young son, her only child, to worry about. In truth, they got a lot of calls from these types of women, and though a lot of uniforms would usually dismiss their worries as paranoia, Sojin did her best to listen and investigate every one.

She reached the van, leaving the woman at the apartment building’s back entrance. Peeking into the window, she didn’t see anything, suggesting that someone had merely parked the van there while they had business to tend to. She was about to turn and tell the woman as much when something in the van caught her eye. Usually, in these types of vans, there were rows of up to twelve seats, all of which you could see from the front. This van was different, however. The two front seats were followed directly by a wall made from what looked to be cardboard that had been quickly painted black in order to match the interior. There were no other windows for her to look through on the van, so Sojin circled around to the front of the van to look through the front window.

One glance was all she needed.

She grabbed her phone from the pocket of her slacks and walked calmly towards the woman who had led her down here, hand hovering over her gun. “Ma’am, you’re going to want to go back upstairs,” Sojin told her firmly, leaving no room for any argument, though, because the woman went pale at her words, she doubted there would have been any words from the woman in a while to anyone.

Once the woman had gone back inside the building, Sojin turned her attention to her phone, dialing up dispatch. “This is Detective Park, please be notified that we have a possible dead body at that 11-54 in Eunpyeong. We’re going to need Crime Scene down here, and be sure Detective Jung is notified.”

Though she wasn’t entirely sure she was at the scene of a homicide, she had been to enough crime scenes to know that the amount of blood she had seen soaked through the cardboard and pooled on the floor of the van meant that, if it all came from one person, they had definitely lost too much blood to be alive.

 

~~~~

 

The silence was killing Sojin.

It had been hours since Sojin first laid eyes on the white delivery van, and everyone was working hard, but her partner, Detective Jung Taekwoon, had yet to say a word in her direction. While Detective Jung was a quiet person overall, Sojin had come to learn how to interpret his silences, and this deliberate, harsh, silence told Sojin that Taekwoon was put off by something. He had arrived first, followed shortly by the rest of the team and a number of uniforms, search warrant in tow. Once they opened the back of the van, the smell of blood hit everyone around. There was no body, but the blood seemed less than a day old. Everyone went to work--Sojin interviewed people in the apartment building, Taekwoon interviewed the workers in the convenience store, and the others on the team went about gathering evidence at the scene and in the surrounding area.

“FIGURED IT OUT!” a voice suddenly cried from the back of the van.

Startled and excited, Sojin, who had been following up with a uniform, rushed over to the van, closely followed by Taekwoon. “What is it?”

“Oh...I figured out a riddle that Hakyeon told me earlier…” Hyuk, the youngest member of the team responded sheepishly.

Sojin heard Taekwoon groan behind her. “We’ll figure this out,” she told him.

“Why did you take this call alone?” Taekwoon asked her suddenly, finally turning on her.

Sojin blinked a few times before responding, shooting a look back at Hyuk, who slid quietly out of the back of the van, just as Hakyeon was returning. “What are you doing?” Hakyeon asked, oblivious.

Hyuk sidled past his partner. “Mom and Dad are fighting…” Hyuk answered under his breath. The answer was enough to make Hakyeon follow Hyuk away from the van, mumbling about some blood that needed to be bagged properly.

“I didn’t think this would turn into a murder,” Sojin hissed back at her partner. By this time, it was dark, but even with the patrol cars’ lights flashing, there wasn’t much noise to cover their conversation.

Taekwoon shifted a little. “Still...you should have waited--I was only turning in some paperwork.”

Frustrated, Sojin spoke a little more harshly than she intended; “Fine; next time there’s a call from a paranoid mother in the middle of the day about a car that had only been parked in the area for a little more than twenty-four hours, I’ll make sure you escort me.”

Taekwoon was silent for a minute; he only watched Sojin’s face intently. When he finally spoke, he said, “What if the suspect was still in the van? What if he saw you snooping around by yourself? There’s a reason we have partners!”

“Excuse me…” someone interrupted before Sojin could retaliate. Turning, the two detectives saw Hongbin, a junior detective who was becoming well-known for his undercover work, looking at them carefully, as though he was observing a ticking bomb. “We...uh...found the body.”

The statement was rendered unnecessary a split second later, when a woman’s wail cut through the still darkness.


	2. 187 - Homicide

**187 - Hongbin**

 

“MY HUSBAND WAS MURDERED AND YOU WANT ME TO CALM DOWN?” a woman shrieked suddenly, breaking the relative calm of the precinct.

Hongbin, startled, looked away from the security footage he had been going over from the suspicious vehicle-turned-homicide case and watched a group of people walk into the building. He could see Detective Jung Taekwoon leading the group, his face only showing the slightest bit of annoyance. Hongbin made a mental note to avoid his lead detective--if Taekwoon looked slightly annoyed, that meant he was absolutely peeved.

Following him came his partner, Park Sojin, leading a young, obviously distraught woman carrying a toddler. She was red in the face and tears were running from her eyes to what seemed to be everywhere. Obviously, she had been the one that screamed.

“Remind me to not get their jobs,” Ahyoung sighed as she slid into the seat next to his, nodding to Taekwoon and Sojin. “Screaming people are so not my thing.”

Hongbin scoffed, pausing the footage. “You’re telling me that you didn’t like when last week’s Johns started yelling about being duped, _Yura_?” Hongbin enjoyed teasing Ahyoung, particularly by using her undercover name. Ahyoung had become so well-known among the rest of the force as one of the best undercovers they had ever had that there were many officers that had no idea that Yura wasn’t actually hear real name.

Ahyoung waved his comment off and reached over him to start the security tape again. “That’s different; they thought I was a prostitute they had paid for--that woman isn’t a John--she’s not even under investigation. She’s yelling at our leaders for nothing.”

“She just lost her husband,” Hongbin explained, keeping his eyes on the screen. “I’d be pretty upset if I had just seen my spouse’s dead body.”

“She saw it?” Ahyoung asked, surprised enough to look away from the screen and at Hongbin. “Oh, man…” Ahyoung shook her head sadly. “That’s not something she’ll forget.”

Hongbin nodded. “Exactly.”

Suddenly, the security footage stopped.

“What the hell?” Hongbin spat.

“Is it the end of the tape?” Ahyoung sounded hopeful, but she was obviously alarmed as well since she immediately started looking around Hongbin’s pristine desk for another disc or video tape.

“No,” Hongbin answered quickly, annoyed. He was clicking everything on his computer’s screen to see if some sort of mechanical failure had occurred, but everything seemed to be working fine. “That was from the day the woman first saw the van. We were hoping to get a shot of a suspect from the apartment’s security footage, but this was the only one that had a clear shot of where the van was parked.”

“Damn it,” Ahyoung grumbled, slumping back in her chair.

They sat in silence for a few seconds, wallowing in their dismay.

“NOT IT!” Ahyoung suddenly cried, raising a finger to her nose.

Hongbin growled. “I hate you.” Now it was his job to tell either Sojin or Taekwoon the news, and unless Hongbin was really lucky, that was going to be Taekwoon. Telling Taekwoon bad news was not necessarily scary--Taekwoon was not the type of person to be angry at others for something they couldn’t control, but still, telling Taekwoon something bad felt worse than telling anyone else because of the lack of reaction Taekwoon has. Hongbin would never forget the first time he had to tell Taekwoon something bad had happened--a drug dealer had managed to give him the slip, and Taekwoon’s non-reaction made Hongbin feel even more disappointed in himself.

Under any other circumstances, Hongbin would have looked for a reason to delay--but this was a murder that needed to be solved, not something like a messed up dinner reservation, and the leads needed to be notified. Growling at Ahyoung, who gleefully watched Hongbin walk away, Hongbin left the main office area, walking down the hallway he had seen Sojin, Taekwoon, and the victim’s wife and child go down. They had headed directly for the interrogation rooms, and when Hongbin reached the end of the hallway, he saw that two of the four the precinct had were currently in use. Though the doors didn’t have any windows, there was a small room in between the two that allowed for observation. For Hongbin, this room was going to tell him which of the leads he was going to talk to.

Praying it was Sojin, Hongbin entered the observation room.

Two of the walls sitting opposite each other, had two way glass that allowed others to observe an interrogation. Already there were a number of fellow detectives watching the two rooms, and they greeted Hongbin with nods when he walked in. Usually, the interrogation rooms that share an observation point are not used at the same time, but as Hongbin glanced in between the two, he could see why Sojin and Taekwoo had chosen this set up. Sojin was in the room to his right, talking to the woman--the wife of the victim, while Taekwoon was sitting with the woman’s child--letting the kid talk about whatever. This set up allowed for the same group of people to observe both the mother and the child at the same time and analyze their reactions.

Unfortunately for Hongbin, because Sojin was interviewing the woman, he couldn’t necessarily interrupt her, which meant telling Taekwoon the bad news about the security footage. Sighing disappointedly at his life, Hongbin left the observation room, turned left and knocked on the door lightly before opening it.

“Is that your house?” Taekwoon was asking the toddler as Hongbin opened the door. The child did not notice him, intent on coloring whatever he was coloring. Apparently they had run out of crayons, because the boy was drawing using one of Taekwoon’s pens. The little boy nodded in response to Taekwoon’s question, and only then did he look up at Hongbin, forcing Taekwoon’s attention to the other detective as well.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Hongbin said calmly and quietly, “But I thought you needed to know that the security footage from the alley has been corrupted--it shuts off the day the van is supposed to appear…”

Taekwoon’s face didn’t show much of a reaction, though Hongbin thought he heard something that sounded like disappointment in his voice when he spoke.”Alright. That’s annoying, but at least we checked it. Thanks for doing it. Send it to Jaehwan and Hyeri--see if they can recover something.” Taekwoon turned his attention back to the little boy, who was staring at Hongbin, his light brown eyes wide. Hongbin was used to that reaction from children--he was paler and taller than most people, and people today were way too fixated on vampires for his liking.

Hongbin nodded to the little boy and left the room, ready to move on to the next assignment--more video footage, but from a block away. He would basically be doing nothing for the next six hours. Hopefully, Ahyoung was still at his desk so they could play a game of “I Spy” while they watched.

 

~~~~

 

**187 - Minah**

“Don’t you dare.”

“Dammit, Minah,” Wonshik groaned, lowering his hands. “You’re no fun.”

“No,” Minah responded. “You’re too loud. If you want to sneak up on someone, walk lightly.” Minah smiled lightly at her partner. He had been trying to sneak up on her and scare her all week, but he hadn’t succeeded yet--he wasn’t very good at this.

“What about you?” Wonshik asked, turning away from Minah and back to the body lying face down on their slab. “How’s your challenge going?”

Minah grumbled under her breath. She never should have agreed to this game when Wonshik suggested it. All she had wanted was something to keep them entertained on slow days, and considering the murder rate had been low this year, there were a lot of slow days. She and Wonshik had written what they called “challenges” on pieces of paper and each week they chose one--Minah chose one of Wonshik’s, and Wonshik chose one that Minah wrote. Minah’s usually consisted of something like sneaking up on her, switching Hyuk’s cold water for flavored water, or the occasional “silent day,” in which Wonshik could not speak for 24 hours.

Wonshik’s challenges, however, were a little more, well, challenging. So far, the easiest one had been calling Jaehwan, “Hyeri” and Hyeri, “Jaehwan” for a day. Poor Jaehwan was so confused that day.

This week though, Minah was sure she had managed to choose the hardest one: “Get Detectives Park Sojin and Jung Taekwoon to go on a date with each other.” This challenge was like asking oil and water to mix--Sojin and Taekwoon were great partners--they always had been, but Minah saw no way they would ever want to go on a date with each other.

“Shut up,” Minah grumbled at Wonshik, deciding that she was now going to focus on the murder victim in front of her.

Really, she didn’t need to concentrate too hard--it was pretty obvious that the man had died from a very violent hit to the back of the head. The back of the skull was so broken that she could feel the soft crater of where he had been hit. “Have you scraped under his fingernails yet?” Minah asked Wonshik.

“Yeah,” he answered as he inspected the marks around his wrists. “I’ve sent the residue over to Hyuk and Hakyeon. Hopefully they’ll get back to us soon.”

Before Minah could answer, the door to the lab swung open and Taekwoon and Sojin walked in. Minah ignored Wonshik’s knowing glance and focused on the detectives.

“Have we found anything?” Sojin asked, looking from Minah to Wonshik to the dead man.

Wonshik cleared his throat. As annoying as he could be sometimes, Minah was always impressed with how professional he was when presenting their findings. “The victim, as you know, is Lee Gobum, a twenty-eight year old construction worker that lived in the apartment building next to where the van was found with his wife and sixteen month old son. He was found in the cellar of his apartment building--a cellar that is used by the first floor convenience store as storage. His arms and legs had been bound, and based on the bruising around his wrists and ankles, he had been that way for roughly forty-eight hours. Cha and Han found that the blood in the van belonged to Mr. Lee, and Dr. Bang and I found that the cause of death--as well as the cause for all that blood--was due to a heavy blow to the back of his head,” Wonshik pointed towards the injury for Taekwoon and Sojin.

“Do you know what caused the blow?” Taekwoon asked as he analyzed the back of the skull himself.

“Not yet,” Minah answered. “Based on measurements, we’d say the weapon was small, but the size is so exact and so damaging that it probably had a handle for leverage.”

“Like a hammer?” Taekwoon asked.

Minah nodded. “That’s certainly a possibility, particularly seeing that he was a construction worker.”

Wonshik entered the conversation again, adding, “We aren’t sure why the body was moved--but it had been. There is a little sign of blood pooling on his stomach, but considering he was found on his back, it shows that he was moved after he had died. We’re assuming he had died in the van, was left there for a time, then moved into the cellar.”

Taekwoon and Sojin were nodding.

“We should have checked that cellar,” Minah heard Taekwoon sigh, more to himself than anyone in the room.

“We didn’t have a warrant for it, and the owners had their cell phones off,” Sojin responded just as quietly. She wasn’t looking at Taekwoon, but she was trying to soothe his concern.

Taekwoon sighed. “Still, his wife was the one that opened the cellar. It should have been us.”

Shaking her head sadly, Sojin didn’t respond to him. Instead, she looked at Minah, “Anything else for us?”

Minah was about to say no, but she caught Wonshik looking at her out of the corner of her eye and quickly came up with a plan. “Actually, not about this,” Minah said, motioning toward the body, “But Wonshik and I are planning on trying that new French restaurant that opened last month this weekend. You two want to go too? We’re asking everyone…”

Sojin and Taekwoon exchanged glances. Minah couldn’t help but wonder that, if she and Wonshik worked together for as long as Sojin and Taekwoon had worked together, would they manage to become as good at nonverbal communication as they were.

“Sure.” Sojin answered for both of them. “Text us the details, and we’ll be there.” With that, she turned and walked out of the lab, followed closely by Taekwoon.

Minah let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“Nice,” Wonshik complimented. “Thanks for inviting me to watch this train crash.”

“Shut up,” Minah growled, turning away from her partner and back to her work.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something short because it's been a while~  
> I was out of the country, so I wasn't able to update. More soon (maybe tomorrow~)

**187 - Jaehwan**

Hyeri’s fingers were dancing over her keyboard, and she was biting her bottom lip. Jaehwan knew this meant one of two things. Either she was pissed or she was onto something. Really, she could have been both pissed and onto something, but Jaehwan couldn’t remember doing anything that would have gotten on her nerves, so he swallowed his pride and asked, “You have something?”

Hyeri nodded, eyes not leaving her computer screen.

“What is it?” Jaehwan asked excitedly, pushing away from his desk and rolling around to Hyeri’s in the rolling desk chair Taekwoon thought he had confiscated from Jaehwan after rolling over Sanghyuk’s foot so hard several toes had been broken a few months ago.

“This footage…” Hyeri mumbled as Jaehwan reached her, almost overshooting her desk and ending up face first in a wall. “Hongbin sent it over, saying the camera shut off the day the van appeared.”

“Yeah, so?”

Hyeri continued to work, typing and clicking faster than Jaehwan knew was possible. She was definitely onto something good. “I don’t think it shut off,” she said. “If it were shut off, there would be no data at all. But here…” she stopped typing and opened a file. “This CCTV camera records for 24 hours, and starts a new data entry after that, but this file, the last one...says it recorded 36 hours.” She pointed to her monitor, and Jaehwan could see what she was talking about. “Hongbin thought the camera stopped recording because there was no new data for that day…”

“But there was data, the recording just didn’t restart,” Jaehwan finished. “But why would that happen?”

Hyeri shrugged. “My best guess is that someone thought that refusing to let the camera start a new entry would stop it from working...but instead, it just started to record continuously.”

“Why did it stop on Hongbin though?” Jaehwan asked, intrigued.

“Because Hongbin didn’t know how to retrieve the footage.” Hyeri responded, a little smug. “These new CCTV cameras, if they run out of space on a disc, they compress older frames, and revert to taking still camera shots. My guess is that Hongbin started the footage after the compressed shots, so he wa watching the video that was still left, then he couldn’t find more video because what he needed to look for were still shots.” Hyeri clicked a few more things and more files appeared next to the “corrupted” video.

Jaehwan shook his head slowly. “And here I thought we’d have busy work for the next few weeks.” He started to push away from Hyeri’s desk, but a gasp from Hyeri made him stop. “What is it?” he asked, not daring to move.

“Call Sojin and Taekwoon,” Hyeri responded quietly, all signs of her previous smugness gone. “I think...this case needs closing.”

Jaehwan, curious, pulled himself back around to look at Hyeri’s computer monitor, only to immediately jump up and over Hyeri’s desk to reach for his cell phone sitting on his own desk.


	4. 10-15: Criminal in Custody

**Taekwoon**

 

Taekwoon was standing in the observation room, glaring at the suspect sitting in the room on the other side of the two way mirror. He never liked being left out of an interrogation, but the Captain had decided that it would be better if his female partner did the interview alone.

“Relax, man,” Hongbin said from his right, his eyes glued to the suspect as well, though his face was set in a noticeably softer expression. “Maybe the Captain will have the next murderer will be arrested by you.” He said it with a light laugh, and Taekwoon didn’t have the guts to tell him that he wasn’t uneasy because his partner was going to get the arrest (and, by extension, the credit). His uneasiness stemmed from the knowledge that his partner was going to be less than two feet from a murderer, and should something happen, Taekwoon wouldn’t be in the room.

Taekwoon wasn’t sure when he had first started feeling this way--he and Sojin had been in the force for a while before they became partners as detectives, but over the past few years, he had gotten increasingly more protective of her.

It was a completely irrational feeling, Taekwoon knew. He had watched Sojin wrestle drunk, angry men three times her size to the ground and handcuff them without his help and knew that the uniformed officer standing in the far corner of the interrogation room wouldn’t allow anything to happen, but the more Taekwoon told himself that worrying over Sojin wasn’t necessary, the more he did worry. The only person who really knew about this feeling was Hakyeon, who, upon hearing Taekwoon tell him this, ended up on a really long and very boring lecture about inverse relationships. Taekwoon could vaguely remember the mention of mosquito bites and making them worse by scratching them, but somehow, Hakyeon was the only person Taekwoon had ever met that could make him stop paying attention to everything. It was one of the reasons Hakyeon was banned from the interrogation rooms. If he could do it to Taekwoon, a head detective, the damage on the cases of Taekwoon’s subordinates could be catastrophic.

Taekwoon was broken away from his thoughts when the door to the adjoining interrogation room opened and Sojin stepped in, leisurely carrying a black file folder. Taekwoon smiled smally. When he and Sojin had first become partners, they joked that should an important interrogation ever need to be done by only one of them, the one doing the interrogation would carry a colored folder--red meant they were unsure if they would get a confession, white meant it could go either way, and black meant that the suspect was definitely caught--confession or not.

He couldn’t believe she remembered that from all that time ago.

“When we talked a couple of days ago, you said your husband had been on a business trip to China,” Sojin began, taking a seat in front of the suspect--the very same woman that first alerted the authorities to the “suspicious” vehicle outside her apartment.

The woman nodded. Taekwoon had seen the look on her face before on a thousand other witnesses--she had no idea that her world was about to come crashing down on her.

“That’s not actually true though.” Though he couldn’t see her face, Taekwoon knew Sojin had a knowing smile on her face as she spoke. “We talked to your husband’s employer, and not only did they say he was not on a business trip, but they also told us that he had not shown up for work for almost a month.”

Taekwoon watched the woman’s expression falter a little.

However, she recovered quickly. “I--I had no idea,” she said, sounding shocked.

Next to him, Hongbin scoffed. “Tell her about the warrant. Tell her about the warrant, Detective Park,” he urged quietly.

Sojin pushed her hair over her shoulder. Taekwoon knew then that the hammer was about to drop.

“If you had no idea your husband wasn’t showing up for work, I’m guessing you also had no idea he had actually spent that time locked in your neighbor’s--I’m sorry, I should refer to him as your lover--your _lover’s_ second bedroom?”

The woman’s expression fell at the mention of a lover. She was had, she knew she was had, but she was not going to give Sojin an inch. After a quiet, tense few moments, she croaked, “Get my lawyer,” all pretenses dropped.

Taekwoon watched Sojin’s shoulders rise and fall in a nonchalant shrug. “I will gladly call your lawyer,” Sojin told her suspect. “But before I do, you should know that your lover has cooperated fully with us and has provided a full confession, even giving you up.”

Before Sojin could say anything else, Taekwoon saw raw, unadulterated fury flash across the woman’s face, and before he could even yell something to Sojin (as unhelpful as that would be, being in another, soundproof room), the woman brought her open right hand across Sojin’s face.

The officer in the room with the two woman acted immediately, and in a flash, he had the woman in handcuffs with only a brief struggle. Sojin hadn’t moved at all; she wasn’t going to give her target the pleasure, but Taekwoon was seething. He was surprised he had managed to stay in place, only to realize a second later that the only reason he hadn’t moved was because Hongbin had managed to get a hold of his lower left arm that was so hard Taekwoon’s brain must have known that any sudden movement would probably have dislocated something.

A glance at Hongbin told Taekwoon that the other detective was expecting a struggle, as he was braced solidly, but Taekwoon, taking a moment to calm himself, muttered a curt “Let go of me,” and a moment later, Hongbin slowly relaxed and let go of Taekwoon, though he still looked ready to pounce should Taekwoon try to bolt.

Instead, Taekwoon swallowed his anger and turned back to the ongoing interrogation.

“Before I go,” Sojin was saying, her voice sounding the same as before, much to the suspect’s annoyance. “I want you to know three things: The first being that you just incriminated yourself; our pathologists knew that the fatal knife cuts on your husband’s body were inflicted by a right-handed person, and since I’m assuming your next ploy was going to be to blame your lover, I should tell you now that he is left-handed. The second thing I’m going to tell you is that you probably should have learned how to properly stop a camera recording from your computer programming husband before you killed him and tried to destroy the video. The last thing I’ll tell you is that in addition to murder and kidnapping charges, you’ll now be facing assault charges--and assaulting a cop is not taken lightly.”

Sojin stood and walked out, without a look back while the uniform read the woman her rights, her face white.

  
  
  


Taekwoon watched Minah apply a new ice pack to the left side of Sojin’s face. He couldn’t tell if it was red because of the slap she had received a little over two hours ago or because of the ice she had been keeping on it under Minah’s instruction, but in any case, Taekwoon wanted it to be better every time she took the ice off in order to take a proper bite of her food.

They had decided to bypass the French restaurant--Sojin wasn’t in a very French food mood, though Wonshik insisted going for samgyupsal to celebrate their victory.

Taekwoon tried to listen to Wonshik talk about how they knew their murder victim had been held captive due to his fingernails or something, but between Sojin and the increasingly worried looks on other nearby customers’ faces as Wonshik continued, taekwoon was only slightly paying attention. Absentmindedly, he made a wrap with all the things he knew Sojin liked and offered it to her.

“Don’t make her put down the ice,” Minah scolded, just as Sojin lifted her hand to take it.

Taekwoon’s only option was to feed it to her, being careful to not bother the inflamed cheek, which Taekwoon couldn’t help noticing looked more red than before.

“Minah, I think your phone’s going off,” Wonshik said as Sojin was finally able to take the lettuce wrap out of Taekwoon’s hand.

“Crap,” Minah mumbled a few moments later as she checked her messages. Looking up, she said, “I’m so sorry, but I think Wonshik and I have to go.”

“Why?” Wonshik asked, his voice muffled by a lettuce wrap he had made. “I want to ea--” he was cut off when he jerked suddenly, forcing him to swallow sooner than he had expected. He coughed as his body protested the half-chewed food, but he recovered quickly.

“You okay?” Taekwoon asked.

Wonshik nodded, his eyes sliding over to Minah harshly. “Yeah, I must have turned strangely earlier, my spleen just started throbbing.”

Minah sighed. “Hakyeon and Sanghyuk don’t know how to file, that’s why. Ahyoung can’t find something for this case, and since she’s finishing the paperwork and our office is locked…”

Wonshik groaned, but stood up. “Let’s go, then.” Looking at Sojin and Taekwoon, he said “Sorry, but don’t worry, I’ll pay on the way out. If you order any more that’s on you though!” He called the last bit over his shoulder as he ran after Minah and towards the subway station.

Sojin looked at Taekwoon, still chewing slowly on the wrap he had made for her. “Does it take two people to unlock an office?”


	5. Chapter Five

**10-0: Caution**

**Hyeri**

 

Hyeri slid out of her apartment as quietly as she could, even guiding the front door into place. She was leaving early, and the last thing she wanted to do was make her parents panic.

For one reason or another, Hyeri’s parents--particularly her mother--had become more and more insistent that she stick to a schedule. Hyeri suspected that it was mostly because they were afraid that, because she was a cop, she wouldn’t come home on time because something nefarious had happened. Even though Hyeri reminded them constantly that she was a computer tech and chained to a desk basically all day instead of a beat cop that had to patrol the most dangerous parts of Seoul, there was no arguing with them. As far as they were concerned, she worked at a police station, and that made her a police officer.

_I shouldn’t have gone through the academy_ , Hyeri thought as the lock on the front door slid into place, the electronics chirping much louder than she would have liked. _Jaehwan didn’t_. Hyeri stayed still for a few seconds, making sure she didn’t hear any frantic noises coming from the inside of the apartment. If her mother found her here, maybe she could claim that she only wanted to run to the market for some morning fruit.

Satisfied after a few tense moments, Hyeri backed slowly away from the door and towards the apartment building’s elevator bay. She only let out the breath she had been holding once the elevator doors closed in front of her. She didn’t want to leave early; she hadn’t planned on it, but as she was leaving the station last night, she had overheard a few of the sergeants talking about the IT department coming in early to update everyone’s computer. Hyeri suspected that no one had told her because they knew what her reaction would be; she was a computer person--a genius, some would say, and she did not appreciate anyone doing anything to her computer, even if it would help save the world.

Jaehwan, of course, hadn’t been bothered by the news when she told him, saying that he’d just remove anything he didn’t want on his computer when he got in to work that morning.

He could be silly at times, but he was a lot more patient than she was. her only reconciliation over that was that his silliness meant that people like Taekwoon, Minah, or even Hakyeon came to her with their technology problems. They really didn’t want to deal with Jaehwan’s awful jokes when they were frustrated that their computer’s monitor had broken.

Hyeri walked out of her apartment building and headed toward the subway station. It was early enough that the streets were almost completely empty, though since she lived in an area that was still being developed, there weren’t an extreme number of bodies on the sidewalks even during rush hour.

She slid her headphones in as she walked. It was a cool morning, but it would get a lot warmer as the day wore on.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, making her jump embarrassingly high in the air. When she turned and saw who it was, she smiled.

“Myung Joon!” Hyeri cried, pulling the earbuds out of her ears. “How are you?”

The man smiled sheepishly. “I’m doing pretty good,” he answered quietly. Hyeri had gone to high school with Myung Joon; they had lived nearby each other, so there had been many times when they and their friends had walked home together. “You’re out early,” he said.

“I’ve got to get to work,” Hyeri answered with a smile. “Have you moved to Eunpyeong as well?” Their high school had been south of the Han River, and Hyeri marvelled at the chance of meeting again so far north.

Myung Joon shrugged. “I’m considering it. I deliver all over Seoul,” he said, motioning to the car sitting on the road next to the sidewalk.

Hyeri read the name on the side of the van. “You deliver for them?”

Myung Joon looked about to nod, but the woman in the mart they were stopped in front of came out. “Please move the van,” she asked politely. “The road’s going to be busy in a few minutes.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and went back into her store.

Taking that as her cue, Hyeri looked back at her childhood friend. “I really should go,” she said. “I’ve probably already missed one of the trains.”

“Let me give you a ride,” Myung Joon told her happily, taking a step towards her. “We can catch up on the way to the police station.”

Hyeri’s face broke into a grin. It had been a long time since she had been able to meet up with any of her high school friends. “Thanks; that’d be great!” She headed towards the van, and Myung Joon helped her into the passenger’s seat before climbing into the driver’s seat.

It wasn’t until Hyeri heard the car doors lock that she realized she hadn’t told Myung Joon that she worked at a police station.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

11-99: Officer needs help

Taekwoon

 

Taekwoon always got to the station early--though police stations are never empty, the night squad didn’t know him very well, which meant that he could do whatever work he wanted without being interrupted by varying team members.

This morning, Taekwoon was looking forward to a long morning workout at the small gym in the station. There was a gym closer to his apartment, but he used the station’s gym more often because he could easily switch between work and exercise. This morning, Taekwoon was feeling a little off, for some reason, so he needed a strong morning pick up.

“Good morning.”

Taekwoon looked up. Sojin walked in to the gym, a smile on her face despite the early hour, carrying her gym bag, a towel, and a water bottle. Somehow, she was a morning person--she never really liked sleeping, and she always worked out here in the morning.

“Morning,” he grunted in response, finishing his last set of benches. He sat up straight as she headed for the elliptical.

She stepped up onto the machine and began pressing buttons. “How long have you been here?” she asked, looking up at him as she started moving.

Taekwoon shrugged and walked towards the treadmill facing the elliptical. “About a half hour,” he answered. “Leg day.” He set the treadmill to an easy walking speed. His leg day was actually the day before and as in shape as he was, getting out of his typical workout rhythm made him feel the work a lot more.

“Did you get a chance to look over the consultation files that were sent over the other day?” Sojin asked between regulated, even breaths.

“Yeah, I sent over my thoughts yesterday,” Taekwoon answered.

“Must be nice,” Sojin sighed. “Being Detective Jung Taekwoon, expert on all things police.” She was teasing him, knowing that he hated any kind of praise directed at him. “Everyone wants Detective Jung’s help,” Sojin continued, a small smile on  her face. “Oh! I heard from a good friend in Majang that their Chief Detective sends you all their murder files for help.”

“Who?”

“Who? Chief Detective Lee,” Sojin answered.

Taekwoon felt himself grimace, embarrassed at himself. He knew who the Chief Detective in Majang was; it was true that he got files from Majang more often than any other district, but he hadn’t been asking about the Chief Detective. He had been curious about Sojin’s “good friend,” and had just blurted out the question without realizing it. But instead of pursuing that line, he just muttered a simple “Oh,” as though he had been after the name of the chief.

Sojin chuckled. “Do you get that many files that you can’t remember all the names? Impressive.”

Taekwoon shook his head automatically. “The only reason they send the files to me is because of my uncle.”

“Come on, Taekwoon,” Sojin sighed, slowing her pace on the elliptical to make it easier to speak. “You get the files because you’re a great detective, not because of your family.”

It was Taekwoon’s turn to sigh. “I’m not going to have this argument again, but thank you, I guess.”

Sojin slowed to a stop. “Anytime,” she said, smiling. She jumped off the elliptical and reached for her water bottle. “It’s part of my job description as partner to keep your ego both in check and inflated, depending on the situation.”

Taekwoon couldn’t help but chuckle. “Speaking of keeping my ego ‘in check,’ as it were, there’s some kind of family gathering next weekend, and i was wonderi--"

“Good morning, detectives!” a loud voice came from the gym doorway, interrupting Taekwoon. Turning, Taekwoon couldn’t help but growl slightly at Jaehwan, even if he didn’t hear it. “Anyone see Hyeri yet?”

“Should we have?” Sojin asked, dabbing her neck with a towel.

Jaehwan shrugged. “She said she would be here early today. You know how she is with system upgrades.”

“That’s weird,” Sojin said, sitting on one of the benches. “She should be here, then. The last time they did a systems upgrade without notifying her she lodged a formal complaint with the captain, remember that?” She asked Taekwoon. “She was angry about it for a month, I swear.” Sojin pulled her cell phone out of her bag and began dialing.

Taekwoon continued to glare at Jaehwan, who noticed the look this time and actually looked scared. Realizing he probably looked extremely angry, Taekwoon looked away and back at Sojin, who looked confused as she held her phone to her ear. “Everything okay?” he asked her.

Sojin brought her phone away from her ear. “Hyeri didn’t answer.”

She’s probably on the way here,” Jaehwan said, nonchalant. Taekwoon, however, noticed that Sojin was beginning to look more concerned than confused.

“No,” she mumbled. “She didn’t just not answer, her phone is off.”

That got Jaehwan’s attention, and now he looked concerned. “But she never turns off her phone.”

The bad feeling that had woken Taekwoon up originally returned, stronger than before. Something wasn’t right.


End file.
